Cancer Treatments, Insights and Other Musings -

Immunotherapy…we hear that word, but many cancer patients don’t understand exactly what immunotherapy is or how it works or it’s an option for their specific cancer/situation. So let’s take a closer look at immunotherapy.

The Jimmy Carter cancer story

Many of you remember that back August 20, 2015, former President Jimmy Carter announced that he had a liver tumor removed but that doctors also discovered 4 tumors in his brain. His outlook was grim, but his medical team at Emory University’s...

When we think of cancer treatment, chemotherapy is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Chemo makes the news almost every day, in part because of its sometimes brutal side effects including hair loss, nausea/vomiting, fatigue and weight loss/weight gain. There are just over 250 chemotherapy drugs that are utilized in the treatment of all different types of cancer.

We may think, “Well, chemo is chemo.”

That’s true, but chemotherapy is used in different ways for different...

The Promising Future of Immunotherapy

Instead of disrupting the immune system like other treatments do, immunotherapy uses certain parts of your own immune system to fight cancer. Cancer cells often hide from the body’s immune system, but immunotherapy works to understand how cancer works, helping the immune cells find cancer cells and destroy them. Immunotherapy helps your body fight cancer in a couple different ways, including: